The Debian Publicity Team is stepping away from X/Twitter, citing concerns over values and diversity.
  • rational_lib@lemmy.world
    48·
    12 hours ago

    shutting out a significant portion of your community without seeking their input first isn’t a sensible move for such a foundational open source project.

    Ironic when X shuts out anyone who isn’t logged in and shuts out anyone who doesn’t pay for a blue checkmark from having visible replies.

    Having an X account isn’t consequence-free - if it becomes where updates occur, people have to sign up for an account and subject themselves to nazis everywhere and all manner of crypto spam just to see updates. And they have to pay Elon tribute to be heard in response. It’s crazy that anyone sees it as being friendly to users.

    • Ferk@lemmy.ml
      2·
      32 minutes ago

      Were they using Twitter to provide exclusive updates not available anywhere else?

      My impression from the post is that they are publishing the exact same updates in multiple locations, including mastodon at https://framapiaf.org/@debian …so just because they were publishing in that one extra site to make it accessible to a particular subset of people does not mean all other people were being shut off from receiving updates.

      However, I do agree with the move, but only because Debian being a FOSS initiative should stay away from proprietary platforms and promote FOSS.

        • Ferk@lemmy.ml
          1·
          55 minutes ago

          I don’t know enough detail about ATproto, but I wonder if it’s technically possible to block access to posts without also blocking federation. From what I’ve heard the functionality is more modular than Activitypub (content indexing being a separate service from content hosting) so I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t possible.

  • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
    72·
    15 hours ago

    When it forces you to log in to view stuff, it’s usefulness as a platform for announcements is substantially lessened.

  • nullpotential@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    391·
    15 hours ago

    shutting out a significant portion of your community without seeking their input first isn’t a sensible move for such a foundational open source project.

    It actually is a perfectly sensible move, and it doesn’t “shut out” anyone. If anything, prioritizing twitter is what shuts users out. They linked to two-three alternatives. What’s the argument here, exactly, from the other side?

    • Ferk@lemmy.ml
      2·
      26 minutes ago

      I think the argument is that those alternatives already existed before. Twitter was not being prioritized, it was essentially mirroring the content already available in RSS, mastodon, etc. So effectively, there’s now one less place where the news will be visible.

      However, I do agree with the move, but only because Debian being a FOSS initiative should stay away from proprietary platforms and promote FOSS, even if it means effectively “shutting off” a portion of users who don’t wanna leave the twitter bubble.

  • markstos@lemmy.world
    431·
    16 hours ago

    My town’s subreddit just started a policy to disallow links to X for similar reasons.

    There is a movement to avoid the platform.

  • prodajvodapavel@aggregatet.orgEnglish
    426·
    6 hours ago

    citing concerns over values and diversity.

    Sigh. It’s always for the dumbest reasons that people leave these abusive platforms.

  • ZeroOne@lemmy.world
    741·
    21 hours ago

    Good, now if only OpenSource devs switched from Discord to let’s say Matrix/XMPP

    We’d be partying

    • MashedTech@lemmy.world
      46·
      19 hours ago

      go back to forums. Support in discord is awful. Discord is not as searchable as a forum public on the internet

      • Dojan@lemmy.world
        29·
        19 hours ago

        Yeah, forums please. I hate the idea of troubleshooting information being locked behind some stupid software we can’t easily index and search. Forums can be put on archive.org, you can literally print a page, or save it as a PDF for reviewing later. You can make use of bookmark software like Linkwarden to archive things.

        Discord? Not so much. You can use third party software to scrape it and save information, but no search engine can index it. Community building is great, but I loathe having to trawl through tonnes of blithering blathering conversation BS just to figure out where to find firmware for a particular chip I have is.

        Makes me want to projectile vomit all over the place, throw my computer out the window, and move to convent.

        • lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          13·
          17 hours ago

          Thank you! This has always been my main gripe about “collaboration platforms” in general (Discord, Slack, Teams, WebEx, etc). It’s just chat with extra steps, and does not make important information any easier to find.

          • Dojan@lemmy.world
            5·
            12 hours ago

            Oh my gods, the mess that is Teams. When I first started working at my current company I was kind of excited because all of the software just works together. It felt novel, and I was enchanted by it. That quickly died when I realised that it makes finding anything a nightmare. There’s a billion different tabs and solutions for every single individual thing, and even multiple things within the same project. I think the main project I work on has like fifteen different test documents, and good luck trying to find the documentation for pushing stuff live! The only real way to find things is to ask someone who knows. There’s half a billion different search bars and finding the right one is just way too time consuming.

            • lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              4·
              12 hours ago

              The “searchification” of fucking everything is driving me absolutely insane! No, I don’t want a search bar to be the only way to find things, and hiding the actual file functions does nobody any favors. Having a big prominent search bar in your product only tells me that you’re actively scraping my data to sell to advertisers.

      • SDK@midwest.socialEnglish
        2·
        17 hours ago

        I want to move my music discord to a forum platform. Can anyone recommend a good FOSS forum with good iOS/mobile app support? Some of the musicians are going to resist if there isn’t a decent, usable, mobile app. It’s been a long time since I set up a forum. Last one I installed on a server was phpBB!

      • Océane@jlai.luFrançais
        1·
        18 hours ago

        I may sound too radical, but I’d go so far as to support a common Logseq knowledge graph.

    • The Bard in Green@lemmy.starlightkel.xyz
      6·
      17 hours ago

      Having worked on a couple of Matrix deployments over the last year, that shit needs to be simpler and easier, yo? Once the Matrix server exists, it’s easy enough to get people to use it.

      Contrast it’s ease of deployment with Mumble for example.

    • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
      14·
      20 hours ago

      God I hope I live to see the day. Discord at first appears like a good IRC wrapper, but the XP of actually using it is fucking gross.

    • ubergeek@lemmy.todayEnglish
      10·
      19 hours ago

      If we’re swapping out discord, please just go with Zulip… It’s FLOSS, and has a solid company backing it that actually cares about FLOSS (They even bought the product back, after it was sold to a company that was enshittifying it)/

    • Zink@programming.dev
      10·
      14 hours ago

      That first reply highlights a major difference in how people approach the world.

      Speaking very generally, conservatism and right wing politics seen to attract those who see everything as a competition and that dominating other people is what it means to be a good person. Funny that it also leads to frustrated, angry, isolated people.

      So if we want to switch to using a website that doesn’t promote hurting/killing 2% of the population, we are now BOWING DOWN to the minority some of us would not rather murder.

      It’s the same reason they hate DEI so much.

      • IdleSheep@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        17·
        16 hours ago

        This is to me one of the major reasons Twitter discourse is completely ruined and the platform is mostly useless for seeing what people think now.

        When the only people who get to be at the top of discussions are people who pay for twitter, the only opinions that get shared are those that are pro Twitter, pro Elon, etc. Because they have a direct stake in the game.

        And that’s if the accounts posting aren’t all bots that pay for a checkmark to boost engagement, which is almost all I see when I occasionally have to check Twitter these days.

        So glad more people are leaving it. There’s nothing to gain from it anymore.

      • Corgana@startrek.website
        14·
        17 hours ago

        Honestly I had the same thought. But on the other hand, internet outrage talking points have also become extremely formulaic…

    • dantheclamman@lemmy.world
      19·
      17 hours ago

      It is depressing, but I try not to forget we are seeing a sort of survivorship bias of stupidity on the former Twitter at this point. The cohort of remaining posting accounts is dumber and dumber on average. And this dynamic is magnified in the replies, because they are paid blue accounts at the top. Eg, self-selected losers. (The top account has likely just hidden their checkmark)

      Edit: PS, are you still using Nitter? I thought it had died?

    • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
      9·
      18 hours ago

      Ah, that captures such a stark answer to why people use xitter though.

      It’s not “so I can hear from you” it’s “So YoU cAn HeAr FrOm Us!!!11oneone”

      Walled gardens? More like prison yard. Lol

  • Jhex@lemmy.world
    581·
    21 hours ago

    I didn’t really need another reason to love Debian more but here we are… I’m donating to Debian today

    • SVcrossDO@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      15 hours ago

      Oh I like that rhythm.

      "I’m lock up, no way Corps and hearsay Brought me to jail FOSS not too late

      All I say is I’m donating to debian today"

  • Zacryon@feddit.org
    3420·
    17 hours ago

    The reasons (summarized using Copilot):

    • The platform no longer aligns with Debian’s values, social contract, code of conduct, and diversity statement.
    • Concerns over X becoming a place where people they care about don’t feel safe.
    • Abuse on the platform happening without consequences.
    • Issues with misinformation and lack of moderation.
    • ubergeek@lemmy.todayEnglish
      201·
      21 hours ago

      Its that social inertia, and I get it.

      I ran a neighborhood group’s social media, and even after FB turned openly shitty, I had to stay on there, because thats where people are.

      I mean, I could have pushed the org to drop them, but then we would have lost the eyeballs of thousands of neighbor’s we’re trying to work FOR.

      Same deal with Twitter, they’ve just gotten to the point where most NPOs lose less by leaving than they would by staying.

      • buddascrayon@lemmy.world
        1·
        14 hours ago

        That’s beginning to wane. The fewer major posters there are, the fewer people will look to the site for information. And the fewer people on there looking for info…etc.

    • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      8·
      18 hours ago

      its not surprising considering the overlap. many linux users are cryptofascists, i.e. luke smith

      • Naia@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        182·
        22 hours ago

        The problem is for organizations it’s harder to leave because that is where the people you want to reach are. That’s the only reason any org or company is on social media in the first place. If they leave too soon they risk too many people not seeing the things they send out to the community.

        It’s more an individual thing because so many people just have social inertia and haven’t left since everyone they know is already there. The first to leave have to decide if they want to juggle using another platform to keep connections or cut off connections by abandoning the established platform.

        • ericjmorey@programming.dev
          10·
          20 hours ago

          That doesn’t explain why they don’t start a transition by posting to both the new platform and the old. And not including links to their new account on their websites.

          • IdleSheep@lemmy.blahaj.zone
            3·
            16 hours ago

            Doesn’t Twitter directly suppress such links? I remember there was a crackdown on people linking their mastodon accounts a while back.

            And external links in general get a huge suppression in the algorithm because Twitter does not want to recommend tweets that take you off the site.

            The platform actively fights you if you want to move elsewhere (which should really be a telltale sign for you to move), so I get why some orgs struggle with that decision. Doubly so if your job relies on the platform’s outreach.

          • ubergeek@lemmy.todayEnglish
            125·
            21 hours ago

            If I ran an org, that needed to reach a community of say… 1000 people in need, and 900 of those people were ONLY on twitter, guess what?

            That org needs to be on twitter, even if President Musk is profiting from it. Otherwise, the org would be remiss in their mission.

              • ubergeek@lemmy.todayEnglish
                114·
                20 hours ago

                Not really a hypothetical though. Its the very reason I kept a non-profit’s account on twitter, and facebook, and instagram, for as long as I did - Because we HAD to in order to effectively hit the mission for the non profit.

  • go $fsck yourself@lemmy.worldEnglish
    30·
    20 hours ago

    This is a great example of where linking to a blog post about an announcement is better than linking to the announcement itself:

    after digging a bit deeper, I discovered that there was originally a longer, more detailed announcement that was later scrapped. I found it in a GitLab commit made by Jean. [Link to GitLab comment in article]

    Good job, itsfoss.com

  • SavvyWolf@pawb.socialEnglish
    1963·
    1 day ago

    Personally, I think that the discussion around this will evolve as the news spreads, but I agree with Robert on this one. Sure, X/Twitter has become a less welcoming place than before, but shutting out a significant portion of your community without seeking their input first isn’t a sensible move for such a foundational open source project.

    Nah, I think I’m cool if Debian doesn’t respect the input of Nazi sympathisers.

    • patatahooligan@lemmy.world
      73·
      1 day ago

      Yeah, that section is bad.

      For one, it’s has classic vibe “if you want to keep the nazis out, you’re the one who’s exclusionary”.

      But also, how is refusing to engage on a platform “shutting out a significant portion of [the] community”? That sounds backwards to me. Blocking people from engaging with Debian on its own platforms would be shutting them out. The implication in the article is that Debian is obligated to be unconditionally present on every social platform its users might be on.

      • Telorand@reddthat.com
        43·
        22 hours ago

        The other twist is, unlike Xitter, you don’t have to create an account on Mastodon to be able to read their feed. You can access it like any other website. So nobody is getting shut out. They’re just posting elsewhere, where anyone can read it.

        • WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world
          12·
          17 hours ago

          You don’t even have to go to the website. Every Mastodon feed can be accessed via RSS. You just have to add “.rss” to the end of the URL.

          • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
            11·
            16 hours ago

            That’s a super neat trick actually. Why the heck has RSS been losing popularity when it seems to be the only magic protocol you really need to keep up with what you actually care about?

            Oh I just answered my own question: It must be harder to hijack RSS with intrusive ads and clickbait…

    • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      51·
      1 day ago

      Yeah what the fuck is with that.

      It’s a very twitter centric view of the web. If you’re not on xitter you’re “shutting out a significant portion”.

      The thing is, it’s not simply that Musk has an ideology that is disparate from my own, he has an agenda that is egregiously contrary to the stated values of the Debian project.

      You’d consult with the community over a new logo or blog layout maybe, but on whether to assist Musk in his far right agenda there’s not really any decision to be made honestly.